RT.com

The Pentagon helps Hollywood to make money and, in turn, Hollywood churns out effective propaganda for the brutal American war machine.

The US has the largest military budget in the world, spending over $611 billion – far larger than any other nation on Earth. The US military also has at their disposal the most successful propaganda apparatus the world has ever known… Hollywood.

Since their collaboration on the first Best Picture winner ‘Wings’ in 1927, the US military has used Hollywood to manufacture and shape its public image in over 1,800 films and TV shows. Hollywood has, in turn, used military hardware in their films and TV shows to make gobs and gobs of money. A plethora of movies like ‘Lone Survivor,’ ‘Captain Philips,’ and even blockbuster franchises like ‘Transformers’ and Marvel, DC and X-Men superhero movies have agreed to cede creative control in exchange for use of US military hardware over the years.

In order to obtain cooperation from the Department of Defense (DoD), producers must sign contracts that guarantee a military approved version of the script makes it to the big screen. In return for signing away creative control, Hollywood producers save tens of millions of dollars from their budgets on military equipment, service members to operate the equipment, and expensive location fees.

Capt. Russell Coons, director of the Navy Office of Information West, told Al Jazeera what the military expects for their cooperation: “We’re not going to support a program that disgraces a uniform or presents us in a compromising way.”

Phil Strub, the DOD chief Hollywood liaison, says the guidelines are clear. “If the filmmakers are willing to negotiate with us to resolve our script concerns, usually we’ll reach an agreement. If not, filmmakers are free to press on without military assistance.”

In other words, the Department of Defense is using taxpayer money to pick favorites. The DOD has no interest in nuance, truth or – God forbid – artistic expression; only in insidious jingoism that manipulates public opinion to their favor. This is chilling when you consider that the DOD is able to use its financial leverage to quash dissenting films it deems insufficiently pro-military or pro-American in any way.

The danger of the DOD-Hollywood alliance is that Hollywood is incredibly skilled at making entertaining, pro-war propaganda. The DOD isn’t getting involved in films like ‘Iron Man,’ ‘X-Men,’ ‘Transformers’ or ‘Jurassic Park III’ for fun. They are doing so because it’s an effective way to psychologically program Americans, particularly young Americans, not just to adore the military, but to worship militarism. This ingrained love of militarism has devastating real-world effects.

Lawrence Suid, author of ‘Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film’told Al Jazeera, “I was teaching the history of the Vietnam War, and I couldn’t explain how we got into Vietnam. I could give the facts, the dates, but I couldn’t explain why. And when I was getting my film degrees, it suddenly occurred to me that the people in the US had never seen the US lose a war, and when President Johnson said we can go into Vietnam and win, they believed him because they’d seen 50 years of war movies that were positive.”

As Suid points out, generations of Americans had been raised watching John Wayne valiantly storm the beaches of Normandy in films like ‘The Longest Day,’ and thus were primed to be easily manipulated into supporting any US military adventure because they were conditioned to believe that the US is always the benevolent hero and inoculated against doubt.

This indoctrinated adoration of a belligerent militarism, conjured by Hollywood blockbusters, also resulted in Americans being willfully misled into supporting a farce like the 2003 Iraq War. The psychological conditioning for Iraq War support was built upon hugely successful films like ‘Saving Private Ryan’ (1998), directed by Steven Spielberg, and ‘Black Hawk Down’ (2001), produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, that emphasized altruistic American militarism. Spielberg and Bruckheimer are two Hollywood heavyweights considered by the DoD to be their most reliable collaborators.

Another example of the success of the DoD propaganda program was the pulse-pounding agitprop of the Tom Cruise blockbuster ‘Top Gun’ (1986). The movie, produced by Bruckheimer, was a turning point in the DoD-Hollywood relationship, as it came amid a string of artistically successful, DoD-opposed, ‘anti-war’ films, like ‘Apocalypse Now,’ ‘Platoon’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ which gave voice to America’s post-Vietnam crisis of confidence. ‘Top Gun’ was the visual representation of Reagan’s flag-waving optimism, and was the Cold War cinematic antidote to the “Vietnam Syndrome”.

‘Top Gun,’ which could not have been made without massive assistance from the DoD, was a slick, two-hour recruiting commercial that coincided with a major leap in public approval ratings for the military. With a nadir of 50 percent in 1980, by the time the Gulf War started in 1991, public support for the military had spiked to 85 percent.

Since Top Gun, the DoD propaganda machine has resulted in a current public approval for the military of 72 percent, with Congress at 12 percent, the media at 24 percent, and even Churches at only 40 percent. The military is far and away the most popular institution in American life. Other institutions would no doubt have better approval ratings if they too could manage and control their image in the public sphere.

It isn’t just the DoD that uses the formidable Hollywood propaganda apparatus to its own end… the CIA does as well, working with films to enhance its reputation and distort history.

For example, as the ‘War on Terror’ raged, the CIA deftly used ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ (2007) as a disinformation vehicle to revise their sordid history with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and to portray themselves as heroic and not nefarious.

The CIA also surreptitiously aided the film ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (2012), and used it as a propaganda tool to alter history and convince Americans that torture works.

The case for torture presented in ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ was originally made from 2001 to 2010 on the hit TV show ‘24,’ which had support from the CIA as well. That pro-CIA and pro-torture narrative continued in 2011 with the Emmy-winning show ‘Homeland,’ created by the same producers as ‘24,’ Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa.

A huge CIA-Hollywood success story was Best Picture winner ‘Argo’ (2012), which ironically is the story of the CIA teaming up with Hollywood. The CIA collaborated with the makers of ‘Argo’ in order to pervert the historical record and elevate their image.

The fact that this propaganda devil’s bargain between the DoD/CIA and Hollywood takes place in the self-declared Greatest Democracy on Earth™ is an irony seemingly lost on those in power who benefit from it, and also among those targeted to be indoctrinated by it, entertainment consumers, who are for the most part entirely oblivious to it.

If America is the Greatest Democracy in the World™, why are its military and intelligence agencies so intent on covertly misleading its citizens, stifling artistic dissent, and obfuscating the truth? The answer is obvious… because in order to convince Americans that their country is The Greatest Democracy on Earth™, they must be misled, artistic dissent must be stifled and the truth must be obfuscated.

In the wake of the American defeat in the Vietnam war, cinema flourished by introspectively investigating the deeper uncomfortable truths of that fiasco in Oscar-nominated films like ‘Apocalypse Now,’ ‘Coming Home,’ ‘The Deer Hunter,’ ‘Platoon,’ ‘Full Metal Jacket’ and ‘Born on the Fourth of July,’ all made without assistance from the DoD.

The stultifying bureaucracy of America’s jingoistic military agitprop machine is now becoming more successful at suffocating artistic endeavors in their crib. With filmmaking becoming ever more corporatized, it is an uphill battle for directors to maintain their artistic integrity in the face of cost-cutting budgetary concerns from studios.

In contrast to post-Vietnam cinema, after the unmitigated disaster of the US invasion of Iraq and the continuing quagmire in Afghanistan, there has been no cinematic renaissance, only a steady diet of mendaciously patriotic, DoD-approved, pro-war drivel like ‘American Sniper’ and ‘Lone Survivor.’ Best Picture winner ‘The Hurt Locker’ (2008), shot with no assistance from the DoD, was the lone exception that successfully dared to portray some of the ugly truths of America’s Mesopotamian misadventure.

President Eisenhower once warned Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.”

Eisenhower’s prescient warning should have extended to the military industrial entertainment complex of the DoD/CIA-Hollywood alliance, which has succeeded in turning Americans into a group of uniformly incurious and militaristic zealots.

America is now stuck in a perpetual pro-war propaganda cycle, where the DoD/CIA and Hollywood conspire to indoctrinate Americans to be warmongers and, in turn, Americans now demand more militarism from their entertainment and government. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

The DoD/CIA-Hollywood propaganda alliance guarantees Americans will blindly support more future failed wars and will be willing accomplices in the deaths of millions more people across the globe.

Michael McCaffrey, for RT

Michael McCaffrey is a freelance writer, film critic and cultural commentator. He currently resides in Los Angeles where he runs his acting coaching and media consulting business. mpmacting.com/blog/

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

” Said Cavell: “The US is a capitalist society. It is the preeminent imperialist power in the world today. As such, those who rule the US perceive that maintaining a class-divided society to be of paramount concern. Internationally, this translates into maintaining at least a two-tiered international system where the US is master and the rest of the world are its servants. This will not change until capitalism is overthrown or destroys itself.”

Provocatively and recklessly, the American Pentagon has recently accused Russia of threatening European allies with nuclear weapons. On the basis of this deplorable accusation, the US is embarking on a $1 trillion upgrade of its nuclear arsenal.

The American nuclear revamp not only puts it in potential violation of disarmament agreements; the move is also destabilizing nuclear forces and increases the risk of catastrophic global war.

If ever Washington’s reckless power politics were in doubt, this is surely the touchstone issue.

As with so many other allegations leveled by Washington against Russia – from election hacking to Olympic sports doping – the claim that Moscow is engaging in nuclear threats is far from evidenced. Indeed, one could say, it’s in the realm of fantasy.But the insane claim is then used to justify Washington’s own reprehensible behavior.

In the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) published last week, US Defense Secretary James Mattis states in the document’s preface that “Russia’s seizure of Crimea and nuclear threats against our allies, mark Moscow’s decided return to Great Power competition.”

Mattis goes on to make other claims against Russia, including that it is in breach of arms controls treaties to reduce nuclear stockpiles. He also alleges that Moscow is using “non-strategic nuclear systems to provide a coercive advantage in crises and at lower levels of conflict,” and that Moscow is “lowering the threshold for first-use of nuclear weapons.”

At the same time, it was reported this week, even by US media, that Russia has fully complied with meeting its reduction targets for nuclear weapons prescribed by the 2010 New START accord.

In any case, the Pentagon’s anti-Russia accusations continue unabated. In particular, Washington claims that Russia has violated the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by developing short-range land-launched cruise missiles. Moscow has denied any violation. Again, Washington does not present evidence to verify its claims.

Presumably, what Washington is referring to is the installation by Russia of Iskander ballistic missiles in its exclave territory of Kaliningrad adjacent to the Baltic states and Poland. This is also what the Pentagon appears to be referring to when it accuses Russia of “threatening our allies”.Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite – a notorious Russophobe and ardent NATO cheerleader – recently said that the Russian Iskanders in Kaliningrad (range 500km) were threatening “half of Europe”.

But hold on a moment. Kaliningrad is Russian soil. As Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov pointed out, it is Russia’s sovereign right to position any of its forces anywhere on its own territory.

NATO’s warped logic has also been applied in the case of Russian military holding exercises on its Western flank. Last year, when Russia held its Zapad defense drills there were hysterical claims from NATO and the Western media that Moscow was about to invade the Baltic region.

Meanwhile, it goes without a hint of irony, that NATO has increasingly built up its forces and military maneuvers along Russia’s Western borders over the past decade and more. Yet, Washington and its allies get away – thanks to Western media servility – with the double-think that such force build-up on Russia’s borders is “defensive”; while any counter-move by Russia from within its territory is distorted as “outrageous” and “offensive”.

Getting back to the issue of nuclear weapons and allegations of Russia’s threat, the stark conclusion from Washington’s warped logic is that Moscow is not allowed to have any nuclear weapons.

Evidently, the US-led NATO military alliance is permitted to station warplanes, warships, troops and tanks on Russia’s borders, including anti-missile systems – all in violation of past agreements. But if Russia positions defensive systems on its own territory then it is behaving provocatively, illicitly, and threateningly. Which then on the basis of this absurd claim allows Washington to expand its nuclear forces against Russia – as the Pentagon is proposing to do in its latest Nuclear Posture Review.Specifically, Washington is committing to a “more flexible use” of nuclear weapons, and the development of new submarine-launched cruise missiles, as well as so-called “low-yield” ballistic warheads.

Such a move will potentially bring the US into severe breach of non-proliferation and arms control treaties. That is, the very malign behavior that Washington is provocatively accusing Moscow of.

Truly, Washington’s logic is an amalgam of Orwellian and Dr Strangelove.

Furthermore, an extremely sinister change in the American nuclear doctrine is its call for explicitly using “nuclear deterrence” in a scenario of conventional military conflict or, what it dubiously deems to be “new forms of aggression” by adversaries.

This is a highly dangerous move by the Pentagon to lower the trigger for deploying nuclear weapons – and on the basis of its faulty, politicized perception about what constitutes “aggression.”For example, the US has repeatedly accused Russia of “hybrid warfare” with regard to the conflict in Ukraine. Russia is accused of instigating that conflict, when in reality, it was Washington and Europe’s meddling in the internal affairs of that country, resulting in a neo-Nazi coup in Kiev in February 2014.

The United States has continually accused Russia of engaging in “asymmetric warfare” from “cyberattacks” and “election interference”. Such claims have never been substantiated, let alone verified – yet they have been raised to the alarmist level of allegedly constituting a “national security threat”.

The anti-Russia political climate being whipped up by Washington – from “Russiagate” to cyberattacks, from sports doping to nuclear aggression – has reached the level of hysterical insanity where Russia by merely having a military defense system is now being traduced as somehow behaving criminally and offensively.

However, parlaying this perverse logic, the US is moving to increase its nuclear threats against Russia – in contravention of international agreements and any objective reasoning.

Even US media outlets like the Washington Post and US-based scientists warned this week that the new nuclear posture was a disturbing drift towards catastrophic war. American history professor Colin Cavell, commenting for this column, said that the hegemonic mentality of the US ruling class is such that no other powers are tolerated to have weapons, even if for self-defense purposes.

Said Cavell: “The US is a capitalist society. It is the preeminent imperialist power in the world today. As such, those who rule the US perceive that maintaining a class-divided society to be of paramount concern. Internationally, this translates into maintaining at least a two-tiered international system where the US is master and the rest of the world are its servants. This will not change until capitalism is overthrown or destroys itself.”

This attitude of US rulers is ultimately tyrannical in their relations to the rest of the world. Ironically, American vice president Mike Pence this week accused North Korea of being “the most tyrannical and oppressive regime on the planet.”

With regard to Russia, the logic of the US is this: You are not allowed to have nuclear weapons, nor even a viable conventional defense system. We, on the other hand, are allowed to threaten you with increasing menace of nuclear annihilation until you do as we demand.

In short, supreme arrogance. But an arrogance that will bring its own downfall.

The views and opinions expressed by Finian Cunningham are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

“I wondered whether a Trump voter from Texas or Arkansas would be concerned about politeness if a foreign power had blasted his home to pieces and killed his family, based on the same sort of lousy intelligence it used to justify invading.”

Data from the New York Times shows that every fifth American airstrike in Iraq kills a civilian

The U.S. invaded and shattered a country on a false pretext 14 years ago, causing violent death on a biblical scale that continues to this day. (Erik De Castro/Reuters)

There are all sorts of definitions of good journalism, but my personal measuring stick is anger.

The best of it should make you angry: outraged, sickened, gut-punch angry.

You will, or should, feel all those things and more when reading and listening to “The Uncounted,” the investigative masterpiece published last week in the New York Times, the newspaper President Donald Trump derides as “failing.”

Actually, in a sense, the Times did fail. It failed to accept the American military’s sophisticated public relations deception about conducting “the most precise air campaign in military history.”

It failed to accept a top general’s assurance that reports of civilian deaths are grossly inflated.

And most importantly, it failed to assign a cheaper value to the lives of people in a country the U.S. invaded and shattered on a false pretext 14 years ago, causing violent death on a biblical scale that continues to this day.

Full license under Trump

The authors of the Times story, over an 18-month period ending last June, visited the sites of 150 bomb strikes in Iraq, and collected detailed data on 103 of them. The Times says its data clearly shows that every fifth American airstrike in Iraq kills a civilian, a rate about 31 times higher than that acknowledged by the Pentagon.

The revelations didn’t surprise Larry Korb, a Washington academic who once served as an assistant secretary of defence under Ronald Reagan. Trump, Korb told me, has given the military what it longed for but was denied under the Obama administration: full licence to carry out airstrikes in any manner it sees fit.

Naturally, conservative hawks and pro-Trump news outlets have basically ignored the Times account. Trump has not commented on it, and if he ever does, it will likely be in a tweet about unpatriotic fake news.

Trump has not commented on the New York Times report. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press)

But the piece goes far beyond data. It presents us with bloodied, devastated human beings, most particularly Basim Razzo, who poses a dignified challenge to the cherished American-exceptionalism notion that the U.S. military is the most moral force in the world.

Razzo is from one of Mosul’s more prominent families, was educated as an engineer at an American university and speaks excellent English. He is a particular sort of Arab man I’ve met many times: soft-spoken, mildly fatalistic, almost painfully polite. And progressive: when his daughter Tuqa tried to hide the makeup she’d applied to her face, he told her not to, that she was beautiful.

He and his family lived in a large, upscale home outside Mosul, right beside a similar house occupied by his brother Mohanned and his family. Together, they endured the ISIS occupation of the city, getting by as best they could.

Then, on the night of Sept. 20, 2015, the American military, with its storied precision, sent bombs into both the Razza homes, killing Basim’s wife Mayada and Tuqa, and, next door, his brother and nephew.

The Pentagon then, obscenely, posted video of the bombing on YouTube, with the caption “COALITION AIRSTRIKE DESTROYS A DAESH VBIED FACILITY NEAR MOSUL.”

“VBIED” is a military acronym for “vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.” The Pentagon was basically bragging that Basim and his brother’s homes had housed ISIS car-bomb factories, and that it had destroyed them, in a blow for freedom and security.

Eventually, the Pentagon would admit that was all nonsense, but only after the failing New York Times failed to buy the official explanation, and lent its influence to Basim Razza’s desperate search for redress.

Until that happened, Razza had been brushed off by American authorities. To him, it was not just pursuit of justice, but an urgent matter of personal safety. In Iraq, he told the Times, once you’ve been precision-bombed by the Americans, Iraqi soldiers consider you ISIS, which can lead to all sorts more ugliness. Basim and his brother’s wife, who also survived the bombing, wanted to remain alive.

Eventually, with the Times’s assistance, Basim Razza wound up in a room with Capt. Jaclyn Feeney, a military lawyer. What followed, recorded and broadcast on the Times podcast the Daily, might even be staggering to the type of American conservative who regards all Muslims as the enemy.

The lawyer explains the airstrike was a mistake. She tells him the United States is willing to offer a “condolence payment.” Not a compensation payment, mind you, or any admission of anything, but merely a payment to convey her government’s condolences.

Congress has voted millions to be used as condolence payments, but the Times reports not a single person in Iraq or Syria has actually received a payment.

Razza did indeed want compensation. He’d calculated the cost of rebuilding his and his brother’s house at $500,000 US, $22,000 for their destroyed cars, and $13,000 for the medical treatment he’d received in Turkey after a hellish trip through ISIS-occupied northern Iraq. He also wanted a written acknowledgement that neither he nor his brother had been ISIS bombmakers. He was not asking that he be compensated for pain and suffering, as Americans usually do when making a claim.

The lawyer offers $15,000. Razza tells her the amount is an insult. She basically says take it or leave it.

“I wanted to laugh, but I did not want to be impolite,” he told the Times.

It was such an Arab remark; manners above all.

There might someday be an official acknowledgment that he was not ISIS, he was told, but that would involve declassifying certain information, which takes much time. He could formally appeal for compensation, but not until ISIS is officially defeated.

Unissued condolence payments

Listening to the ritual humiliation of Basim Razza, swallowing the anger that such excellent journalism provokes, I wondered whether a Trump voter from Texas or Arkansas would be concerned about politeness if a foreign power had blasted his home to pieces and killed his family, based on the same sort of lousy intelligence it used to justify invading.

As it turns out, Congress has voted millions to be used as condolence payments, but the Times reports not a single person in Iraq or Syria has received a payment since the bombing campaign against ISIS began three years ago. A U.S. spokesman basically told the newspaper the military has other things to worry about.

But the government did worry about Basim’s cousin, who was working and residing in Little Rock. An FBI agent visited him to enquire whether the killing of his relatives had made him, “in his heart of hearts sympathize with the bad guys.”

RT News

Western states should not expect Turkey to blindly follow their instructions anymore, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said ahead of talks between Turkish and EU officials. He also supported the deal on S-400 missile defense systems with Russia.

Erdogan made a speech against western and, in particular, EU countries that he believes are treating Turkey unfairly, while addressing his party’s lawmakers in Ankara on Tuesday.

“The West wants Turkey to bring about their demands no questions asked… I am sorry to say that Turkey no longer exists,” the Turkish president said, as cited by AP, while his foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu was preparing to meet with the EU top foreign officials in Brussels.

Relations between Turkey and the EU have been on the rocks since the Turkish authorities launched a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent in wake of the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016.

A brewing diplomatic row between Germany and Turkey worsened in March after several German states refused to host rallies in support of the Turkey’s constitutional referendum that eventually granted the Turkish president more powers in April. The refusal infuriated the Turkish leader, who likened it to the policies of Nazi times. Most recently, the war of words between Ankara and Berlin reignited after Erdogan was denied permission to stage a rally on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg.

The arrest of 10 human rights activists, including the head of Turkey’s branch of Amnesty International and German and Swedish citizens on July 5 in a hotel on the Sea of Marmara, soured strained relations even further, with human rights advocates calling on EU leaders to raise the issue with their Turkish counterparts during the talks.

During his speech, Erdogan lashed out at his critics, referring to the detained activists as “agents” and warning European countries against meddling in Turkish internal affairs.

“You’re going to prevent Turkey’s president and ministers from speaking in your country, but your agents are going to swarm in, come to hotels here and break my country up into pieces?” he said, as cited by Bloomberg, vowing retaliation to the countries that infringe upon Turkey’s sovereignty and refuse to do business on equal terms.

Following the meeting in Brussels, Johannes Hahn, European Commissioner in charge of European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, reminded Turkey of the obligation to respect human rights and core democracy values, including the freedom of the press, calling them “basic imperative requirements for any progress toward the European Union.”

Responding to the criticism, Cavusoglu labeled reporters currently on trial in Turkey as “pseudo-journalists who help terrorist activities,” arguing that their actions, as well as that of the arrested soldiers and politicians, contributed to the coup.

“They need to also face the sentences that are necessary,” he said, as cited by Reuters.

‘Nothing to worry about’ – Erdogan on S-400 deal

In an apparent reference to concerns of the US military over a looming purchase by Turkey of Russia’s advanced S-400 anti-missile defense systems, Erdogan reiterated he was looking forward to the deliveries.

“God willing, we’ll see them [missile systems] in our country soon,” the Turkish leader said, as cited by Bloomberg.

He noted that Ankara at first attempted to secure the deal on similar conditions with Washington, but it was never agreed.

“If we can’t get what we want from America, we have to look elsewhere,” he said.

Erdogan has already responded to remarks by Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, who said Saturday that the reports of the S-400 purchase are “incorrect” and “would be a concern, were they to do that.”

“Why would it be worrying? Every country needs to take certain measures for its own security,” the Turkish president told journalists at Ankara airport on Monday, as cited by Anadolu news agency.

Russian and Turkish officials have been negotiating the purchase since November 2016 and have repeatedly confirmed that the deal is practically secured save for some financial aspects. Earlier this month, reports emerged that $2.5 billion was agreed as the sum of the contract.

America’s Invasion of Syria

The US government has invaded and occupies Syria, supporting the ‘rebels’ (tens of thousands of imported foreign jihadists there) against the nation’s secular government, and the only two US Senators who are at all disturbed that the US has violated both US law and international law by having our soldiers and weapons in Syria are the two libertarians, Rand Paul and Mike Lee. Even they — the Senate’s two libertarians — don’t care about America’s violation of international law by America’s invasion and occupation of Syria; even they care only about our government’s violation of the US Constitution. Even they accept America’s right to violate international law (which wasn’t even an issue in that vote).

The other 98 US Senators don’t object, at all, to the US government’s invasion into, and occupation of, Syria; they don’t object to this government’s violation of international law, and they (the other 98) also don’t care about its violation of the US Constitution.

If any progressive had been in the US Senate, that person would have objected to both violations; but, in the Senate’s votes on these matters, neither Bernie Sanders, nor Elizabeth Warren, nor Sherrod Brown (the three supposed ‘progressives’), has joined with Paul and with Lee, even on the objections to the violation of the US Constitution, much less extended such objections to include this government’s violation of international law. That’s how lawless our government actually is.

This is therefore entirely a bipartisan issue: the outlaw nature of the US government is almost 100% acceptable to the US Senate as regards this government’s violation of the US Constitution, and is 100% acceptable to the US Senate as regards this government’s violation of international law. And things have been that way both when the President was the Democrat Obama, and when the President is the Republican Trump. In this way (as in so many others), it is really the same regime: whichever Party is in power, it is the regime of America’s oligarchs; that’s to say, of the US aristocracy (the controlling US stockholders in US-based international corporations, who demand this — they demand these invasions: Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. — they are virtually all neoconservatives).

Not only is the invasion and occupation illegal, but it is aggressive. The basic charge against the Nazis at the Nuremberg International War Crimes Tribunals in 1945 was aggressive invasion, or invading a country that had not invaded one’s own country; and certainly the US and its recent Presidents would be in the prosecution-dock there today, if international law were being applied — which is unfortunately not done.

The US ‘news’media pay little attention to this matter; and, to the extent that they do pay attention to it, none call-out this renegade government, the US; they instead claim such vagaries as that the US does not «have clear authority under international law to attack Syria», even when they do discuss this matter; and, in that statement, which appeared in the New York Times on April 7th right after Trump had bombed Syria, facts are acknowledged which make quite clear that the use of the qualifier ‘clear’ there is actually profoundly misleading: The US simply has no authority under international law to be in Syria. Here is the way that the NYT’s Charlie Savage summarized the situation:

The United Nations Charter, a treaty the United States has ratified, recognizes two justifications for using force on another country’s soil without its consent: the permission of the Security Council or a self-defense claim. In the case of Syria, the United Nations did not approve the strike, and the Defense Department justified it as «intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again», which is not self-defense.

Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, in a briefing with reporters, invoked Syria’s violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and a related Security Council resolution from 2013, saying, «The use of prohibited chemical weapons, which violates a number of international norms and violates existing agreements, called for this type of a response, which is a kinetic military response».

However, while the resolution said the Security Council would impose «measures» if anyone used chemical weapons in Syria in the future, it did not directly authorize force. The chemical weapons treaty does not provide an enforcement mechanism authorizing other parties to attack violators as punishment.

It is amazing that he can hold his job and yet report such devastating and incontrovertible proof of the outlaw nature of the US government, in terms of international law. All major US ‘news’media are mouthpieces for the US government whenever the issue is international relations (they were such mouthpieces regarding Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and much more, which is why the US public accepts this US government), and Mr. Savage was there saying something which violated that iron rule. He has reason to be personally worried, to have written the there, about that.

This NYT article enabled him to publish that stunning fact, in answering only the falsely qualified question which had been posed there, of «Did Trump have clear authority under international law to attack Syria?» and Mr. Savage might have gotten into really hot water if he had instead been answering the question posed as, «Did Trump have authority under international law to attack Syria?» Only thinking readers (perhaps that’s 1% of the Times’s audience) would recognize the subtle deception of their readership to believe that the US President might have such authority, but that it is merely not ‘clear’. Such deception is the way to lobotomize the public (99% of it, perhaps) into accepting their own fundamentally lawless government whenever it invades — as Americans supported, for example, the invasions of Iraq, and of Libya, and now of Syria.

Mr. Savage also dealt with the question (and here also will be the opening of his answer to it):

Did Trump have domestic legal authority to attack Syria?

The answer is murky because of a split between the apparent intent of the Constitution and how the country has been governed in practice. Most legal scholars agree that the founders wanted Congress to decide whether to go to war, except when the country is under an attack. But presidents of both parties have a long history of carrying out military operations without authorization from Congress, especially since the end of World War II.

His use there of ‘murky’ is similar to the prior question’s having introduced the deceptive (not to say unnecessary) term ‘clear’: The routine violation of the US Constitution here isn’t murky, any more than the international illegality of America’s unprovoked invasions isn’t clear. But, perhaps that’s the way people such as Charlie Savage can keep their jobs, by playing along with the myth.

It is the myth that enables this gangster-government (who are both international and US gangsters) to remain in control over the US

That government is now seeking from Congress the authorization for US military forces to continue occupying Syria even after ISIS becomes eradicated there.

…Extension and Modification of Authority to Provide Assistance to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria: The Administration appreciates the increased funding authority included in section 1222, but notes its concern that the provision does not contain additional requested authority for small-scale construction of temporary facilities that are necessary to meet operational needs and force protection requirements in both Iraq and Syria. As the campaign to defeat ISIS transitions beyond the liberation of Mosul [in Iraq] and Raqqa [in Syria], operational commanders will need the requested authority to build temporary intermediate staging facilities, ammunition supply points, and tactical assembly areas that have adequate force protection. These facilities, supply points, and assembly areas will enable the pursuit of ISIS into the Euphrates River Valley and help improve the security of Iraq’s borders. Current authorities, limited only to repair and renovation of existing Iraqi facilities [because the US government still hasn’t officially announced its invasion of Syria], severely limit the coalition’s maneuverability and its ability to respond quickly to changing operational conditions.

Extension and Modification of Authority to Support Operations and Activities of the Office of Security Cooperation in Iraq [because Congress authorized only the invasion of Iraw]: The Administration appreciates the continuation of existing authority, but is disappointed by the lack of authority in section 1223 to expand the list of eligible recipients to include the «military and other security forces of or associated with the Government of Iraq with a national security mission». The expanded authority would help address capability gaps, professionalization efforts, and defense institution building across the breadth of the Government of Iraq’s (GoI’s) national security institutions.

Trump wants Congress to add funding «for small-scale construction of temporary facilities that are necessary to meet operational needs and force protection requirements in both Iraq and Syria» — and this very much includes continuation of America’s military occupation of Syria, even though only Iraq had allowed the US forces in, but the US is in Syria only illegally (only as an invading force).

George W. Bush after 9/11 requested and got from Congress unlimited authorization for war against Al Qaeda, but now the US regime says that this was unlimited authorization also for war against ISIS — and, now, if ISIS becomes defeated, then still the unlimited war against Syria will continue and be unlimited, and will continue to grow even more without limit until perhaps all non-military expenses of the US government (other than repayment of America’s national debt) will be stripped-out.

With any crook, give him an inch, and he will demand a mile. Why don’t these ‘representatives of the people’ start, finally, to serve the people, instead of to serve the donors who allowed them to be there? Is it because those donors won’t allow it?

Trump is now requesting funds to be added for continuation of a US invasion and occupation that America’s political mega-donor-class have craved since at least 1949 and finally got under Obama; and, Trump wants to continue it. He, too, turns out to be a neocon (like Obama, and Bush, and Clinton).